Brotherly Love
by likeaplacebo
Summary: On Drew's first night as a vampire he slaughtered his young brother to sate his hunger. He thought the boy was dead ... he was wrong. The past can come back to bite you in the butt. (removed chap 4. and am re-writing it)
1. Prelude -- The Becoming

Disclaimer:  
  
I don't know anything about Drew's past. I have no idea how old he is, I don't know about his family, this is all my interpretation of his past.  
I've made Marty an ass (wait, made?). I've made Drew angsty(er), broody(er) and into a bit of a porn star ... uh, anyway.  
As you can see, CandyAppleBlack and I are both on a weird 'Claudia-esque' writing wonder trip so...yeah, anyway. Another fic with a vampiric kid,  
from a different angle.  
  
Here's a word from our sponsor CandyAppleBlack: "In my fic Bonnie is good, she very very good. But the little beast in this fic is horrid"  
By the way, the fic was titled by CandyAppleBlack ... I knew I kept her around for some reason.  
  
NOTE: I took this fic down before because I didn't think I would be able to go anywhere with it...I had a block! but I think I have  
a vague idea what's going to happen now so ... anyway.  
  
  
  
Title: Brotherly Love  
  
Prelude  
  
  
The terrible cold moved like liquid through his veins making his heart stutter suddenly in its sick, slow, inhuman rhythm. The world, it seemed, had taken on a new and terrifying brightness, the images too sharp, the sounds too clear and too loud. A low animal growl left his throat, echoing in the darkness like a mournful wail as he stood, waiting for the suffering to subside, waiting for the abomination that animated his lifeless body to be satisfied with his torment and quelled into slumber by the gentle arms of death.  
  
How long had he been stumbling through this loathsome hell?   
  
Unsure, he drew a haggard breath.  
  
All around him, the scents seemed comfortingly familiar; the pleasing fragrance of his mother's flower gardens swirled in the air like an intangible phantom and the smell of sweets and dirt that were so reminiscent of his dear brother, Joshua.  
  
"Joshua," he called, voice barely reaching a whisper.   
  
Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to crush the boy's body in an embrace. He'd tell Joshua over and over that he hadn't died that it had just been some horrible and dreadful mix-up...and they'd laugh together then. What madness! Thinking he was dead! What horrible foolishness, indeed! He would take this cursed half-life as existence if it meant he could kiss his mother, hug his father, hold his brother...  
  
"Drew?" the dulcet little voice shattered his reverie.  
  
He raised his head to see the small boy making his way from the huge house, which had been Drew's home, and across the yard towards him in a slow, dreamy stagger. The wind tossed the child's too-large 'Spider Man' pajama top and ruffled his dark curls with a gentle, almost motherly, caress, making him appear an angelic apparition rather than anything true or real. His childish features creased and crumpled with a hundred different emotions, cruel and kind alike, as he broke into a sprint and threw his thin arms around his brother's waist.  
  
"Drew," the child's voice was a wet, pleading sob, "Is it really you?"  
  
He carefully gathered the child into his arms, kissed his temple, murmuring softly all the while, "Of course it's me, Joshua..."  
  
"They told me you were dead," his words were punctuated with jerking cries as he choked on the combination of sorrow and joy that swelled like something malignant within his chest. He laid his head on his brother's shoulder, little whimpering sounds leaving his mouth like breath.  
  
"All is well, hush," Drew whispered.  
  
Joshua was drowsing in his arms, contented by his brother's gentle crooning. The child's heartbeat was an intoxicant, the warm smell of him almost overwhelming. Thoughtlessly, Drew lowered his head and pressed his mouth to the warm skin of the boy's throat, ripping the flesh with a pair of unskilled, newborn fangs. He sighed against the thick, sweet fluid that flooded his mouth and grasped the struggling, writhing creature in his arms more firmly.  
  
No, not a creature, something in his mind protested. A boy. Joshua.  
  
He drew back in disgust, choking on the blood in his mouth and gaping in revulsion at the yawning tear in the boy's fragile throat. The body tumbled from his suddenly useless arms, dropping limp and damaged as a broken doll. The child's mouth opened and closed as though he were a fish struggling to breathe out of water and a small bubble of blood formed through his parted lips then popped spattering his smooth, pale face with liquid red. His fingers clutched at the earth convulsively for a moment then stilled and his drowned breathing ceased.  
  
Drew fell to his knees, clutching the bloody body to his chest with enough force to make the fragile little bones break in his embrace. He wept, stroking the lifeless face as though he meant to gently rouse the boy from a nightmare.  
  
"Oh god...no...I didn't mean to hurt you Joshie," he cried, "I never meant..." 


	2. Chapter One

Circle One: Nightmares and Dreamscapes  
  
  
  
Drew's eyes flicked open. He pressed a trembling hand to his cheek, touching the blood tinged tear stains that belayed his troubled dreams. His breath came in harsh little gasps as he gazed up at the satin lined lid of the coffin. The nightmare images that pranced viciously through his tormented mind refused to fade and seemed even more horrid and cruel as consciousness invaded his skull.  
  
He moaned softly and pushed against the satiny surface of the coffin top, forcing it open. Moon light bathed the inside of the coffin, fingers of the gauzy illumination stroking his skin like a lover. A shadow passed over his face, brief as a ghost, he looked up to see Marty standing over him, grinning like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary. In fact, forget proverbial, the boy had probably swallowed a canary or two in his time.  
  
"Bugger off," Drew muttered as he sat up.  
  
Marty raised an eyebrow, his grin widening to allow a pair of fangs to peer viciously from beneath his upper lip, "You were making a lot of noise in your sleep, were having a nightmare or something?"  
  
"I don't want to talk about it," he replied, red blooming in the darkness of his eyes. He climbed free of his confinement to stand face to face with the other vampire, eyes still blazing dangerously as he turned to walk away.  
  
"Yeah, neither do I, but Doc says I need to work on my social skills," he laughed as he spoke as though the prospect amused him to no end.  
  
"Why he would think you are anything but a well adjusted glorified- mosquito is beyond me," Karl quipped, wiping the sleep from his eyes with balled fist like a drowsy child startled awake by a loud noise. He tossed a wary glance to Drew and then returned his gaze to Marty, "So what did you do to piss him off this time?"  
  
Marty offered an innocent shrug, "I did nothing. I blame society...mostly you," he gestured absently to Karl.  
  
'...Drew' the word came from nowhere and reverberated inside his head, drowning and corroding his coherent thoughts like a disease. Drew pressed his fists to his temples, his face twisting in sudden anguish as a low cry crept past his lips. 'Come and play,' called the infantile voice, twining through his cerebrum like hot strands of copper wire.  
  
"Stop," Drew pleaded against the mental onslaught.  
  
Essie slunk from her coffin with serpentine grace, her regal features touched with mild disconcertment and annoyance as she moved towards the others and rested her gaze on Drew. "What's wrong with him?" she questioned, raising a brow and looking oddly like a puzzled angel peering over the clouds to quell the concerns of the faithful.  
  
"Maybe his cheese finally slid of the cracker," Marty suggested, looking with absurd amusement at the gibbering and pained vampire. "It's bound to happen when you're that insanely angsty."  
  
The scene was broken with a shrill and striking cry from Merrill. She stood, much like Drew, her own mind battered by his anguish. She pressed her hands to her ears and moaned in pain, gasping in broken sentences, "It hurts ... oh god ... it hurts ..." her eyes clenched shut as though against a sudden bright light.  
  
"This show is worthy of popcorn," Marty exclaimed, the ghost of a smile still on his lips.  
  
"You can't eat popcorn," Karl remarked, his mouth remaining slightly ajar as he finished speaking. His eyes, which always sported a generally perplexed look, seemed even more puzzled by what he beheld before him.  
  
'I'm gonna come find you, Drew,' the tiny and innocent voice taunted from within the confines of his brain, 'then we can play together.'  
  
There was a little titter of laughter after the words, a piercingly sharp sound like glass breaking ... then there was only silence, utter and complete. Drew buckled under the weight of it, stumbling forward a step then plunging to the floor with the peculiar gracelessness of a hanged man cut free of the noose that had strangled him. He watched with dispassionate interest as the floor rushed up to meet his falling body.  
  
It was the sudden whimper from Merrill which subdued his lethargy and Drew turned his head, angling it so that he could look in her direction. The girl had fallen to her knees and her head was bowed as if in prayer. Her hands rested on the floor with the palms turned oddly upwards as though she were a medium at some macabre seance. Her mouth moved but no words left her lips until she lifted her hazy and distant gaze, resting it firmly on Drew.  
  
"What was that?" Merrill's tone was that of a frightened little girl, seeming almost accusing, though her next sentence came as barely more than a sigh. "It sounded like a child but the voice ... the voice was wrong."  
  
Drew closed his eyes and shivered.  
  
  
  
  
  
Circle Two: Facets of the Reaper  
  
  
  
Drew stood in front of the monitors, his face taking on an even paler cast as the glow from the screen touched his skin and bleached away its color. He looked ill and almost ... old, even though those trivial human frailties could never truly infect him. Essie sighed weakly, finding herself feeling such a strange tenderness for the boy who seemed to be deteriorating more and more before her eyes.  
  
The others had dwindled from his company slowly so that now she and Drew were alone; Marty, after the initial merciless mocking, had found other ways to amuse himself which would most likely result in some new form of E-bola being created. Similarly, Karl had drifted off to his own personal distraction ... his ever growing interest in the game of chess. He was, Essie mused, becoming quite the admirable opponent. Merrill and Dr. Murdoch had slipped away to discuss whatever horror it was Merrill had seen in the tormented tangle of Drew's psyche because, Murdoch had surmised, the boy was really too fragile at the moment not to be damaged by further interrogation.  
  
Drew's voice broke the stillness like a violent cough, "Essie ... Did you know that the lightening bolt is a symbol for death?"  
  
She was taken aback by his tone; he spoke with the lukewarm dispassion of someone who had pointed out that it was raining rather than having just expressed something that was so simply morbid. She wasn't sure just what he meant until she turned her attention from him to the monitor and she saw the image that had brought about his epiphany. Drifting on the screen with teenage disarray was a vague representation of a dark haired girl wearing a pair of new-looking jeans and a dark t-shirt with a vivid bolt of lightening adorning the chest. When the girl's movements stilled Drew's finger followed the line of electricity down her shirt the way a boy might trace the curves of his lover's face in a photograph.  
  
"It's odd ... to wear something like that, don't you think?" he posed the question, not shifting his attention from the two dimensional figure that swayed and moved in the world of black and white.  
  
"Drew, are you alright?" she'd moved nearer to him without conscious effort.  
  
"No, I don't think I am ... not at all," he said softly, lifting his head to look at her. His eyes, she saw, still wore the wounds of the night's previous tears and his face, which she'd mistaken for old and exhausted, seemed suddenly so young and so lost. "I don't know what's wrong with me ... I heard ... it's like," he stammered a little but she continued to listen with benign patience. "It was like I was hearing a ghost."  
  
Essie extended her hand instinctively, gently touching his face, and just as instinctively he tilted his head a little to take full advantage of the caress. "Well if there is any truth in old wives' tales ..." she said comfortingly, "... then ghosts can't hurt you."  
  
"I've never put much stock in 'old wive's tales'," he muttered, unconvinced by her attempt to placate his fears.  
  
"Then I suppose I'll just have to protect you myself," she kidded, coaxing a sad half-smile from him. "What exactly did you hear Drew? Why did it scare you so badly?" she hardly recognized her own voice as she spoke; the self-serving vanity which had always laced her words, giving them an almost noble sound, was replaced with an unabashed concern.  
  
Drew turned his face away from her as if his attention were captured by some faraway noise. "I heard my dead brother's voice," he laughed harshly through clenched teeth. "It sounds so insane when you say it out loud doesn't it?" he pressed on, not waiting for Essie to reply or show any signs of comprehension. "I killed him the night I was 'turned'," his tone was flat and dull, the sound a person might expect to leave the lips of a corpse should one ever decide to speak. "I didn't mean to ... it was ... it was like it wasn't me at all ... like I was some horrible monster ... I ..."  
  
The words died on his lips as Essie enfolded him in her arms. His body felt strangely rigid against her own, as if she were hugging a mannequin rather than a flesh and blood creature. Yet, just as she considered ending the embrace his stance softened and he wrapped his arms around her.  
  
"Shush," she cooed softly, stroking his back the way a mother may to persuade an infant back to sleep. "It wasn't your fault," she soothed, doubting her words were any real solace. She understood all too well the sharp feeling of guilt that came with the sweetness of that first kill ... it was like a razorblade hidden in a ripe apple that corrupts you with a bite and tears at you even more with each cursed swallow.  
  
"I'm so scared," his voice seemed tight with grief.  
  
"It's alright," she consoled him gently.  
  
"Essie," he spoke softly, turning his head so that his lips were a mere breath away from her ear. "Thank you."  
  
He slipped from her arms then, breaking the strange intimacy between them. He turned to the monitor, looking perhaps for the dark haired girl with death drawn in lightening on her shirt ... or maybe just lost again in the turmoil of his guilty thoughts.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author's note: Relationship between Essie and Drew? Heh, I could see it ... of course I'm a sick and twisted individual :) 


	3. Chapter Two

Author's Note: Finished this chapter completely now. I'm reading Clive Barker at the moment hence I'm a little more morbid than I'd normally be. Also, I had trouble writing from Dr. Murdoch's perspective so the last bit is a little...uh...forced? Anyway, that is all for now.  
  
  
  
  
  
Circle Three: In the Hands of Small Children  
  
  
  
The parking lot outside the 'Thunder Roadhouse' seemed still save for the occasional drunk who staggered with intoxicated defiance to whatever broken down automobile happened to be their's ... each completely sure they could drive without the actual use of their brain. Nick watched one such fool for a moment, half-bemused, then turned his attention back to Sherry who smiled when she caught his gaze.  
  
God, she was hot.  
  
Any other thought that may have existed in his adolescent male mind melted into one plain and simple assertion: he was looking at the most beautiful girl in the world. The way her hair fell in sweet honey and copper curls made his fingers itch to touch it and that mouth ... his thoughts meandered off to its various possible uses and he grinned. Even the shirt she wore added to her mischievous allure; it was a cute little black thing boasting a zig-zag line of purple-blue sparkles on the chest, the likes of which a pop star like Britney Spears might be seen prancing mindlessly around in.  
  
Nick's body jerked with sudden shock as a screeching wail spewed forth from the mouth of the alleyway next to the 'Roadhouse', poisoning the placid peace of the nighttime air with its venom. At first, it sounded like an animal ... some pitiable creature being horribly torn apart ... then it tapered off into a forlorn little sob which had the sharp and painful ring of a child's miserable weeping.  
  
"What was that?" Sherry's eyes were wide and the mixture of surprise and fear that swirled in their depth made them appear almost dizzy.  
  
"I don't know ... it sounded like a kid," Nick moved towards the source of the hopeless crying, Sherry following a few steps behind.  
  
He peered into the darkness and sure enough saw a wraithlike little form crouching like a serpent in the shadows. The child was sickly pale, its pallor becoming ever more evident in the dancing gloom of the garbage strewn path. It wore only a pair of tattered blue jeans and was bare chested ... it was so woefully thin that its ribs were visible, jutting out sharply beneath the child's drawn and wan flesh. When it stood Nick saw that its face was eerily gaunt, the eyes sunken to the point that dark smudges of grey and purple encircled them ... and it wore a strangely blissful smile on its blue-tinged lips which sent a shiver of terror trickling down his spine.  
  
"Hi," he said gently, taking a few calculated steps into the alley. He told himself that it was stupid to be afraid of a little kid, especially one that looked like a strong breeze might break him in two, yet his trepidation was obvious in the slowness of his motions. It was stupid ... but he was terrified none the less. "You alright little guy? Did someone hurt you?"  
  
Its small face crumpled with sudden sadness; a saccharine mockery of human emotion like the ghastly grin of a clown mask. "Y-y-yes," its narrow chest hitched. "I'm so scared," it lowered its head somewhat, making its dirty dark curls fumble forward into its face, and its bottom lip trembled a little.  
  
"Nick don't," Sherry caught his arm as he tried to approach the boy. "If something's wrong we can go and get help, okay?"  
  
He shrugged out of her grip. "It's just a kid, what's there to be scared of?" he said, more to assure himself than her, and closed the distance between he and the child ... leaving Sherry to simply gape after him helplessly.  
  
It lunged, taking him off his feet with little effort. He felt it on him, all teeth and claws, tearing into his throat, ripping at his shirt, shredding the skin beneath the fabric like damp paper. He thrashed uselessly beneath the small, gruesome creature even as the pain began to make the realm of consciousness diluted and unreal. His cries were silenced by the tiny palm pressed against his lips and soon the darkness consumed the last vestiges of his mind.  
  
...  
  
Sherry couldn't move ... couldn't think. Terror had choked whatever screams she might have mustered, strangling them savagely in her throat. A peculiar paralysis diffused through her body making her legs ignore the need to run, her tongue dumb and her eyes wide with horror. She could only stare, morbidly transfixed, at the nightmare before her.  
  
The little creature knelt on Nick's chest, the fingers of one of its babyish hands tangled tenderly in his hair, holding his head at an awkward ... broken ... angle. It made sickly little wet noises as it licked and bit at the wound it had torn in his poor neck, sounding almost as though it were chewing raw meat.  
  
The child lifted its blood spattered face and pressed its small bow of a mouth to Nick's in what seemed a sadistic and disgusting parody of a goodnight kiss. When it drew back, however, she saw it had clamped the tip of Nick's tongue between its teeth, stretching the flesh grotesquely like warm taffy until it finally tore with a sick ripping sound. The child tilted its head back, letting the appendage slide down its throat like a snake swallowing a rodent, then it turned to her and it smiled.  
  
Sherry found her voice then.  
  
And she began to scream.  
  
  
  
  
  
Circle Four: Plip  
  
  
  
Murdoch's office looked much like a wasteland; a devastated graveyard where essays and poorly done book reports went to die. He stood at the window with his shoulders drawn into an anguished line and body slumping somewhat ... looking little better than the papers that were strewn atop his desk.  
  
He had received the call little over an hour ago and still he found himself reeling from the news. It was always heart wrenching when someone so young died, but it seemed especially disturbing when it was so violently. He wasn't sure whether or not it was a blessing that Sherry had screamed loudly enough to draw attention to the situation ... in death she might have been spared the nightmares that were sure to come after what he was told she had been witness to.  
  
That was a morbid thought, he scolded himself. Of course living was better, wasn't it? He closed his eyes against the light in the room which, through his liquid and grieving eyes, suddenly seemed much too bright.  
  
"Reginald Murdoch," the voice was familiar but he still jumped, shocked despite his normal demeanor of composure. He turned to see Marian Hackett, harshly blond with features seeming, as always, oddly cruel and sharp. Her clothing was dark, a black leather vest pulled over a turtleneck and inky colored pants ... she looked like some sort of huntress or perhaps a dominatrix.  
  
"What can I do for you Miss Hackett?" he knew his voice sounded choked and he honestly didn't care. She had no right to be here. She never did. She was a parasite and he'd never loathed her so instinctively and completely as he did in that instant.  
  
Her face was unreadable as slunk into the room, moving like a shadow. "You, of course know there was a vampire attack tonight ... a boy was killed," she lay three photos on the desk, splaying them like a deck of playing cards. All of them were horrible, bloody, death scenes where Nick lay utterly broken and discarded, looking so ... small. Murdoch felt his stomach clench into a sickly fist as he gaped at the phantom images then at the female-reaper that had laid them out before him.  
  
"Why in heaven's name would you..."  
  
"Sometimes getting information requires visual aids," she looked at him with dispassion. "Perhaps now you'll be willing to tell me what you know about the vampire infestation in this place ... before something like this can happen again," she added the last bit with a slick of venom to her tone.  
  
His hands clenched into fists so violently that his nails bit the flesh of his palms, "Get out of my office."  
  
Her brow furrowed, "I am a Federal..."  
  
"You are a Federal pain in my ass!" he cut her off mid-sentence, shocking himself more than he had startled her with his sudden use of profanity. His voice struggled to full volume when he spoke again, "Now leave before I have you forcibly removed, Miss Hackett."  
  
She gaped at him for a moment, as if she suspected some parade of clowns might at any moment pounce out from behind his desk and pronounce that the earth was indeed flat, then she turned on her heels. "I'll be back with a warrant, you will regret this Dr. Murdoch."  
  
"As I generally regret any interaction with you," he spat. "Good day, Miss Hackett."  
  
The woman made a small disgusted noise as she exited the room and Murdoch sat down at his desk, cradling his head in his hands. He wanted to banish the horrible images that had been etched into the surface of his thoughts but they persisted as incessantly as the sting of a paper cut.  
  
Finally, drawing a quavering breath, he lifted his gaze to see the repulsive pictures still lay on his desk, their glossy surfaces gleaming in the glow the lamps. He resisted the urge to destroy them ... though, it would have been so simple to just throw them in the trash or run them through the 'shredder'. Carefully, after suppressing the urge to retch, he examined the images.  
  
The boy's head was turned so that his cheek lay on the pavement, his eyes were bleak and staring ... and his mouth hung open so that a thin line of drool and blood was faintly visible drizzling from the corner of his slack lips. Murdoch flinched his gaze away from Nick's face to his throat; the wounds there were the tiny punctures that were the signature of a vampire bite. However, upon closer inspection he guessed that they were little over an inch apart. That in and of itself wasn't odd, he deduced, the bite had just been caused by a creature with a smaller and more delicate jaw. His mind mulled over this simple idea for a moment, thrusting forth a few varied hypothesis ... it was perhaps a female vampire or...  
  
Or a child.  
  
Merrill's vague and troubled description of what she had seen in Drew's mind hit him then with all the fury of a Mac Truck. 'It was a like a child calling to him,' she had muttered, her words bleeding into a monotonous litany, 'but it was so... so full of hate.'  
  
He was struck with the force of the revelation.  
  
Reality slowed to a lurch before him as his thoughts whirred on. He pulled his hair back with the haphazard rake of one hand's splayed fingers, then stood, groping blindly for the vulgar images that lay atop his desk. He clutched the pictures for a moment, holding them like they were utterly alien to his eyes and touch, then tossed the vile things into the trash-bin which swallowed them up hungrily with a mouth of discarded papers.  
  
When the world again seemed to move at a steady pace before his eyes, he walked towards the ornate shield which marked the entrance to the wine cellar. He pressed an age-weathered hand to its cool, metal surface and gave it an almost too violent twist. His efforts were greeted with a familiar grind of gears as the entrance unlocked and he stepped into the murky stairwell.  
  
He took a few confused steps downward before he found his balance; too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice the form that was climbing the stairs before him.  
  
"Dr. Murdoch?" Essie's voice shattered his concentration.  
  
The darkness made her face a vague and haunting image of white skin and dark eyes. He stared at her, dumbstruck and almost ... repulsed. It wasn't the girl herself that made him inwardly recoil ... it was her nature, that subtle shadow of evil that tainted her blood and made her what she was. He tried to find words but his mouth refused and his tongue stumbled.  
  
"I have to talk to you," she pressed.  
  
"Essie I don't have the time just now..."  
  
Her face changed in the shadows as she took another step towards him, it was sorrowful and concerned ... the expression that a child which was about to ask him where people went when they died might wear. Whatever revulsion he'd felt at her presence faded to the fatherly compassion she and the others always invoked within him.  
  
"It's about Drew ... about what he heard," she toiled to find the right words and her features creased with thought.  
  
"Go on," he said gently, putting a hand on her shoulder.  
  
"He heard his dead brother's voice," she concluded. "He ... he killed the boy the night he was made or ... or at least he thought he did ..."  
  
The images and thoughts, which had a moment ago been disjointed and ill-formed in his mind, came together with an abrupt and painful click ... like a broken bone being jerked back into place and set.  
  
...they were indeed dealing with a child vampire.  
  
Oh god ... The vile little creatures were the least human among vampiric kind simply because of their youth upon creation. Their morals died as their ties to the mortal world faded into bloodlust and, often, madness. However, it was rare that one survived beyond their first few nights of life ... most, in their infantile innocence, stumbled out into the sun and perished or simply starved to death.  
  
How had this wretch stayed alive without the nurturing of an elder vampire? He supposed that didn't matter ... at the moment only one option of any consequence surfaced through the whirlwind of his thoughts.  
  
It had to be destroyed.  
  
Murdoch pressed a hand against the wall to steady himself, fear drizzling through him slow and dizzying as a snake's venom. 


End file.
